Where Olympic athletes play

The sun is beginning its leisurely descent, and Stadium Australia is bathed in a pale golden glow. But for the teenagers playing video games in a windowless room 300m away, it might just as well be day or night. Locked in private battles, they hunch over their screens, eyes glazed, as the thump of dance music reverberates in the background.

It is an unexceptional scene, but these are no ordinary young people. They are some of the finest physical specimens in the world, and they have come to Sydney in pursuit of that most coveted of prizes: an Olympic gold medal. But even elite athletes need time to unwind, and the entertainment arcade in the Olympic village is a constant hive of activity.

The village, which has sprung to life over the past 12 days in anticipation of the start of the Games today, is a thriving metropolis in the western Sydney suburb of Homebush - indeed, with a population of 16,000, it is the fifth-largest town in New South Wales. It is here that the athletes whose exploits will be followed by four billion television viewers will eat, sleep, train and hang out. Every emotion from joy to anguish, from elation to heartbreak, will be experienced in the village over the next two weeks.

They are a precious commodity, these young men and women who carry the hopes of nations on their shoulders, and the smooth running of the village is integral to the success of the Games. Once athletes enter, they are in a private cocoon, shielded from the prying eyes of the public and the media, out of harm's way.

The recent film, A Day In September about the murder of 11 Israeli athletes by Arab terrorists at Munich in 1972, was a reminder of the worst-case scenario that has haunted the organisers of every Olympics since. In Sydney, the probability of uninvited visitors seems slim. The prostitutes who were ejected last weekend from the media village, a separate complex a train-ride away, would not have got within a mile of the apartments and prefabs that house 10,700 athletes and 5000 officials from 200 national teams.

To encourage residents to stay within its protected walls, the village caters for every wish and whim, and most services are free. It has a nightclub, a cinema, a medical clinic, a library, a bank and a general store, an internet cafe, a cavernous gym with nine tonnes of weights and a restaurant serving up global cuisine.

Inside the hair salon earlier this week, a Cuban swimmer, Imaday Nunez, was having her bob dyed gold, while the US swimmer Barbara Bedford chose the more patriotic colours of red, white and blue.

The bodycare centre was also doing a roaring trade, with the Brazilians and Mexicans among the most enthusiastic patrons of its foot massages and facials.

Safety and privacy come at a price, of course, and security surrounding the village is positively oppressive.

If you arrive by taxi, you must alight at the bottom of an approach road guarded by a police post and walk the last few hundred metres. Just inside the main gate is an international zone where accredited guests and media can mingle with athletes - after walking through a metal detector and past a phalanx of security personnel. The residential zone is strictly out of bounds to visitors.

Most competitors in Sydney were not even born when the violent events of Munich unfolded, but they seem content enough to be cosseted behind a ring of steel.

In the amusement arcade, two Ukrainian cyclists looked up briefly from a game of table football to express halting approbation of their new environment.

A pair of giggling Argentine swimmers agreed. "It's good, yes, the village, I think," said Espen Berg-Knutsen, a member of Norway's shooting team. "There's a lot to do, and it's very, very sociable." Sociable, but not too sociable, is the fervent hope of Olympic officials. Friendships forged between people from different continents and cultures may advance the cause of international understanding, but all-night parties that prevent athletes from getting their beauty sleep do not.

Sydney organisers must be dreading a repetition of the 1992 Barcelona Games, where there were demands for more condoms, a black market in alcohol and late-night revelries of such exuberance that the restaurant had to be closed between 1 am and 5 am and the beach disco was instructed to play only "smoochy" numbers after midnight.

At Atlanta in 1996, there were also gripes about noise. Hardly surprising, when 10,000 people in their teens and twenties are living cheek-by-jowl in a pressure-cooker atmosphere for up to four weeks.

Victories will be celebrated as surely as sorrows will be drowned and liaisons formed. Every Olympics - particularly since the 1976 Montreal Games, before which men and women were segregated - has had its share of gossip and scandal.

The problem is that some residents finish their events before others have started. Hence the bad reputation of the swimmers, who always compete in the first week, and the short patience of the track-and-fielders, who have to wait until the second.

The marathon runners, who race on the final day, are shunning the village in Sydney, so disruptive have they found it in the past.



Alcohol is banned in the Olympic village - the nightclub, which closes at midnight, serves only "mocktails" - but there is nothing to stop people from drinking outside and returning inebriated. Each athlete is supplied with a ration of 51 condoms, which equates - as the Australian press has been swift to point out - to three a day for the duration of the Games.

Unclean thoughts may be purged at the village's religious centre, which incorporates a Hindu temple and a Buddhist shrine. Alternatively, after working up an appetite, residents can proceed to the vast restaurant, which can accommodate 4900 diners at one sitting and offers 170 dishes including stir fries, curries, lentils and - in a nod to the host nation - a daily barbecue of sausages, shrimps, emu and kangaroo.

The 24-hour dining hall is presided over by a food and beverages manager who rejoices in the name of Anto Sweetapple. Eight truckloads of food are brought in daily to be prepared by 250 chefs.

The restaurant is a place where the hopefuls can rub shoulders with sporting heroes. Australia's 17-year-old swimming sensation, Ian Thorpe, looked up from his breakfast cereal one morning this week to find himself being videotaped by two wide-eyed athletes from overseas.

Some of the highest-profile competitors are staying in hotels, including the US sprint stars Michael Johnson and Marion Jones and the US basketball Dream Team.

But for famous faces, the village can be a refuge. Marie-Jose Perec of France, considered the chief rival of Australia's 400m golden girl, Cathy Freeman, is considering abandoning her five-star hotel for the anonymity of the village, so fed up is she of being pestered by local reporters.

At Homebush, the 20,000 journalists covering the Games are confined to a rigid schedule of press conferences and photo-opportunities at the press centre, a bus ride from the village. "We hardly ever bother going near the village anymore," says one veteran Olympics reporter.

"There's no point."

The village is not exactly in a dream location. Built on the site of a former armaments depot, it is a 45-minute drive from the city centre and the harbour.

But there is, at least, plenty to see and do around Sydney. For the athletes, Atlanta was the pits of boredom.

Here, complaints have focused on the temperature at night; while these may be the Summer Games, Sydney is actually on the cusp between winter and spring. Extra blankets have been brought in, but with more athletes qualifying than expected, some are having to sleep three to a room.

National teams have personalised their living quarters by hanging out flags and, in the case of the Dutch men, sticking up pictures of bikini-clad models. The Australian men, meanwhile, are spellbound by the routine of one of their neighbours: a Polish track and field athlete who exercises each evening in her underwear in the window of her house.

Australia is a party nation, which suggests that there will be plenty of high jinks during the Games.

Australians still have fond memories of Tokyo, where Dawn Fraser, the triple Olympic gold medallist swimmer, stole an Olympic flag from the Imperial Palace in 1964.

Those were sterner times, and Fraser's escapade led to disciplinary action from the Australian Swimming Union. Now she is one of Australia's most revered figures and her country's team attache at the Sydney Games.

So you never know; the athletes keeping their team-mates awake in the village over the next fortnight could be tomorrow's role models.

- INDEPENDENT